BGS Geoheritage – images from the collections

Friday, 16 November 2018

﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿E B Bailey was born on 1 July 1881 at Marden, Kent. In 1902 he graduated with first-class honours in geology and physics from Clare College, Cambridge. In the same year he joined the Geological Survey of Great Britain and worked in Scotland.

In 1915 Bailey joined the Royal Garrison Artillery as a subaltern. He was wounded on the Somme in September 1916 and near Ypres in 1918. These wounds resulted in the loss of an eye and a permanently damaged left arm. Bailey was awarded the Military Cross, the Croix de Guerre and was made a Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur. In spite of his injuries he later wrote in Geological Survey of Great Britain (1952) "The 1914 War was a comparatively happy one for juniors on the staff..."

In 1919 Bailey became District Geologist for the West Highlands and Islands. He resigned from the Geological Survey in 1929 and took up the post of Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow. In 1937 Bailey was appointed Director of the Geological Survey after the premature death of Bernard Smith.﻿﻿﻿

During the Second World War Bailey joined the Home Guard along with several other Survey staff. He recorded in Geological Survey of Great Britain that on one occasion "...I had been temporarily buried by a V1 or Doodlebug".

Bailey was Knighted in 1945 and in April of that year retired as Director of the Survey. He continued to be active in the field of geology until shortly before his death on 19 March 1965.A G MacGregor in an obituary in the Geological Society of America Bulletin described Bailey as "a very great geological leader and investigator". Rather more irreverently he was described in Down to Earth: One Hundred and Fifty Years of the British Geological Survey (1985) as "perhaps the most eccentric Director of them all".You can find out more about the Geological Survey and the First World War in the paper "Some aspects of the British Geological Survey’s contribution to the war effort at the Western Front, 1914–1918" by D G Bate and A L Morrison. This can be downloaded here

Thursday, 8 November 2018

F M Trotter was born at Gateshead on 19 April 1897. In 1916 he was studying geology and chemistry at Armstrong College, Newcastle when, at the age of 18, he joined the Royal Engineers. Trotter was sent to the Western Front as a dispatch Rider. In 1918 while near Vimy he was badly wounded by shrapnel and lost one of his eyes and part of his skull.

Sketch of Trotter c1937 (P832327)

After he recovered Trotter was able to resume his studies at Armstrong College and was awarded his BSc in 1920. In 1921 he joined the Geological Survey of Great Britain and was first stationed at their office at Whitehaven, Cumbria. A study of the glacial history of the Vale of Eden and surrounding areas gained him a DSc.

In 1933 Trotter moved to the Forest of Dean and at the outbreak of the Second World War he was sent to South Wales to work on the coalfield. At the end of 1941 he was promoted to District Geologist for the North-West of England and in 1955 he became Assistant Director (Deputy Chief Scientific Officer). He retired in 1963 and died on 24 July 1968.

In an obituary in the Proceedings of the Geologist's Associationhis former colleague William Colin Campbell Rose wrote: It was a constant source of wonder and admiration to his colleagues that despite this tremendous handicap (of which he never complained) he enjoyed his life and work to the full and seemed not to suffer any disadvantage.

You can find out more about the Geological Survey and the First World War in the paper "Some aspects of the British Geological Survey’s contribution to the war effort at the Western Front, 1914–1918" by D G Bate and A L Morrison. This can be downloaded here

Tuesday, 6 November 2018

C H Cunnington (of whom we do not have a photograph) was born on 7 June 1889. In 1909 he obtained a first class honours degree in Geology from University College, London. Cunnington joined the Geological Survey of Great Britain in 1910 and spent much of the next four years surveying an area bordering the Warwickshire Coalfields. An obituary in the Proceedings of the Geological Society later referred to this as "excellent work".He had joined the Officer's Training Corps before the outbreak of the First World War so entered the army soon after it began. In 1915 he was sent to Gallipoli on special military duty along with two other former staff from the Geological Survey, R W Pocock and T H Whitehead.﻿﻿﻿

The work they did was related to trying to find an adequate water supply for the troops there. An unpublished report on the geology of the Gallipoli peninsula was produced for the War Office. Sadly, it is now untraceable. ﻿

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After returning from Gallipoli, Cunnington joined the Machine Gun Corps and served in France. He was invalided out of the army in 1917 and later underwent a major operation. He suffered a relapse and died on 26 April 1918.

During the war 29 staff from the Geological Survey and Museum joined the armed forces. They consisted of 14 geologists,
3 fossil collectors, 2 general assistants, 3 attendants, 4 draughtsmen, 2
labourers and 1 assistant clerk. Cecil Cunnington holds the unfortunate distinction of being the only one of those who did not survive the war.

For a detailed study of the terrain at Gallipoli see Doyle, P & Bennett, M R 1999. "Military Geography: the influence of terrain in the outcome of the Gallipoli Campaign, 1915". Geographical Journal, 165, p12-35

You
can find out more about the Geological Survey and the First World War in the
paper "Some aspects of the British Geological Survey’s contribution to the
war effort at the Western Front, 1914–1918" by D G Bate and A L Morrison.
This can be downloaded here

Monday, 22 October 2018

In September 1916 the Geological Survey was contacted
by the Admiralty Compass Department asking for assistance with the design of
aircraft compasses. The problem was with the compass point and cup which were
part of the bearing that allowed the compass needle to move. Herbert H Thomas,
a petrographer at the Survey, was given the task of finding a solution. The
point and cup were both made out of sapphire, which caused the point to develop
flaws and cracks. In a report Thomas and Survey chemist E G Radley wrote:

Page of report by Thomas and Radley (GSM/DR/St/A/20)

“It appeared desirable that sapphire should
be retained as the material for the cup, and therefore we sought some slightly
less hard substance suitable for the points.

Agate, from its closely felted microscopic structure, absence of
cleavage and inclusions, moderate hardness and extreme toughness, was selected
as the most suitable natural substance for the purpose. It is also cheap and
can be obtained easily in this country in homogenous masses.”

This combination of sapphire and agate turned
out to be successful and solved the problem.

H H Thomas was also involved in the analysis
of concrete from German fortifications.

In September 1917 it was noticed that German
concrete pill-boxes on Vimy Ridge, which had been captured by Canadian troops,
were made with gravel which could not have come from Belgium. It was suspected
that the Germans had transported the gravel through the neutral Netherlands. If
this was the case then it was in contravention of the Netherland's neutrality
declaration as the Dutch were supposed to prevent the belligerent powers from
transporting military materials across neutral territory.

By October samples of the suspect concrete
had been received by the Geological Survey and analysed. One of these samples
was F2397.

"Fine
grained grey spongy lava. Tephrite. Occurs as angular fragments and chips, and
has the appearance of a quarried rock. This rock by its mineral-constitution
and structure is of an unmistakable type. It has all the characters of the
Niedermendig tephrite, so extensively quarried on the eastern slopes of the
Eifel, bordering on the Rhine. Its usual port of Shipment is
Andernach"

Page from report by Thomas (BGS Archives: GSM/PT/A/27)

This meant that the gravel must have come
from Germany. This issue was so important the J J H Teall, a former Director of
the Geological Survey was brought out of retirement to confirm the
identification.

The evidence resulted in a Dutch threat to
stop the transport of German sand and gravel across the Netherlands.This could have brought the Netherlands into
the war but none of those involved wished this so an agreement was
reached.

You
can find out more about the Geological Survey and the First World War in the
paper "Some aspects of the British Geological Survey’s contribution to the
war effort at the Western Front, 1914–1918" by D G Bate and A L Morrison.
This can be downloaded here

You
can read about how one geologist, C B Wedd, was mistaken for a German spy hereYou can read more
about the forthcoming publication La Terre et le Feu, géologie et géologues sur le front occidental hereAndrew L Morrison

Tuesday, 30 August 2016

A chance discovery among some photographs in the BGS Geomagnetic archive included this interesting image of a lighthouse. After much searching, this was identified as the Isla Observatorio at the southern tip of Argentina.The following photograph is a good match for the fifth photo down on this history of the island, further evidence that this set of photographs is indeed the observatory on Isla Observatorio.

The Observatory was run by Lieutenant Commander Horacio Ballvé, who may be among the people pictured in the photo below.

The following show the inside of the magnetic observatory with some of the instruments.

Lastly are two photographs, one showing a small ship and the other a beach with southern sea lions.

Tuesday, 12 April 2016

The Eli Simpson Archive is a major collection of c 100 large format record books full of exploration accounts, newspaper cuttings, maps, surveys, photographs and published articles compiled by Eli Simpson and other members of the British Speleological Association. These extracts give a flavour of the material found in the albums. These items are from the Gaping Gill album.The collection was held for many years at the British Cave Research Association Library but are now held on deposit at the National Geological Repository at British Geological Survey, Keyworth for safekeeping.Archives such as this one are not only important for the historical viewpoint but are also important as a source of information that supports current research into karst geohazards.A short account of of the Eli Simpson Archive can be found on the British Caving Library website. It has links to the full Gaping Gill volume and the the catalogue of the collection at the British Geological Survey.

Thursday, 10 December 2015

During recent stocktaking
at Murchison House, British Geological Survey in Edinburgh, a copy of the North-west Highlands Memoir (Peach et al, 1907)
was found in the Palaeontological Department. It has been rebound but is in
excellent condition with little signs of use and no obvious foxing. The memoir
contains detailed descriptions of the Lewisian, Torridonian, Moine and Cambrian-Ordovician
rocks in the Durness to Kyle of Lochalsh area, summarising the results of the
survey’s detailed work there in the late 19th century. This copy
patently belonged to John Horne who was Assistant Director in the Geological
Survey in Scotland from 1901 until his retirement in 1911.

The fly leaf of the
memoir contains the signatures of 29 attendees of the renowned 1912 excursion
to Assynt, which followed on from a British Association meeting in Dundee in mid-September
that year. This excursion, led by Peach and Horne, was attended by 31notable European
and British geologists (see Barber, 2010). The flyleaf also contains the
signatures relating to an excursion undertaken in 1914, when John Horne took a further
party to Assynt. Attendees included Sir Alexander and Lady (Rachel Workman) MacRobert,
but also included the well-known geologists Reginald A Daly and Professor
Molengraaf. Rachel Workman, the daughter of the noted American mountaineers
William and Fanny Workman, was educated at Cheltenham Ladies College and gained
a degree in geology from the University of London in 1902. She undertook
research and published papers on alkaline igneous rocks (e.g. carbonatite and
nepheline syenite) and was one of the first women to be elected a fellow of the
Geological Society in 1919. Information on the MacRobert Trust, including her
ladyship’s contribution to the Second World War, can be found at The MacRobert Trust.
The memoir is to be archived by BGS.

Photograph of the entire party of the Assynt Excursion led by B.N. Peach and J. Horne, taken outside the Inchnadamph Hotel during September 1912. Excursion of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting held in Dundee.

Photograph of the foreign visitors outside the Inchnadamph Hotel, Assynt Excursion held in September 1912, led by B.N. Peach and J. Horne. Excursion of the British Association for the Advancement of Science Meeting held in Dundee.

From: Sowerby, James. 1802-1817. British Mineralogy: Or Coloured figures intended to elucidate the mineralogy of Great Britain. Plate from vol: 3. page no.171. Modern name: Calcite. Location: Samples from the Dimple mine near Matlock.

From the British Geological Survey Library in Edinburgh, the following images show a couple of early examples of theExploration Geologique du Canada: Rapport de Progrès or the
Geological Survey of Canada: Report of Progress, the first published in 1846
with the progress from the year 1844.

Exploration Geologique du Canada: Rapport de Progrès

In a paper presented to the 'History of the Book in Canada’ Open Conference in May 2001:

A notable
and honoured man, Logan is the subject of a Dinner Address
made by J.M. Harrison at the Annual Dinner of the Geological Association of
Canada on the 7th June 1963, which makes for an entertaining and informative read.

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Communicating scientific heritage in BGS through images and the written word

This blog provides an opportunity for BGS staff to display the most interesting items collected by the Survey over the past 180 years.The BGS has had a long history. Geological mapping started in 1832, the Ordnance Geological Survey was formed in 1835, the Museum of Economic Geology started in 1841 and the Geological Survey of Great Britain and Ireland was created in 1845.